Sky On Fire: From Venice Balloons To AI-Powered Drone Swarms, The Rise Of Unmanned Warfare
This 4-part series looks at the history of drones, their use cases, and how they've transformed modern warfare, reshaping military strategy and countermeasures.
Published : December 12, 2025 at 4:06 PM IST
The Drone Story - Part 1: When someone mentions drones, most of us picture a travel content creator hovering a sleek quadcopter above a turquoise coastline or a videographer capturing the bird-eye view of a wedding, concert, or the unequivocal charm of a bustling city (where life-threatening AQI doesn’t hinder the view). The small, battery-powered machines have become so familiar that it’s easy to forget their family tree is soaked in gunpowder. The ancestors of these peaceful flying cameras were wartime machines, and their modern avatars are currently rewriting battlefields around the world.
From the American Armed Forces using a kite with an attached camera for reconnaissance during the Spanish-American War in 1898 to drones being used in the recent conflicts between Ukraine and Russia, as well as Israel and Iran. During Operation Sindoor, India also utilised drones for a variety of critical roles, including intelligence gathering, surveillance, and precision strikes, marking a significant shift in India’s military tactics.
Just like in games such as Call of Duty, where drones are deployed for reconnaissance and targeted strikes, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have become an integral part of modern warfare, primarily due to their low cost, giving birth to a battlefield that relies on them for surveillance, intelligence, precision strikes, and even swarm attacks.
Though high-end purpose-built military drones with technologies like anti-spoofing GPS, jam-resistant comms, thermal vision, etc, are quite expensive, regular drones are much cheaper and can be customised for military use. Regular drones don't put a dent in the army’s pocket like precision-guided munitions, and the technology has been around so long that you'd see students making quadcopter UAVs with a camera and an FPV (first-person view) control system as part of their college project.
History of unmanned aircraft in wars
The concept of battle drones can be traced back to 1849, when Austria attacked Venice using unmanned balloons filled with explosives. A major milestone in drone design came in 1907, with the development of one of the first quadcopters—a precursor to modern drones. In 1916, amid World War I, British engineer Archibald Low designed an experimental prototype of the first pilotless aircraft guided by radio signals.
After World War I, UAV technology continued to advance. In the 1930s, the US Navy experimented with radio-controlled aircraft, leading to a modified Curtiss N2C-2 achieving the first fully unmanned flight under radio control. In Britain, the de Havilland DH.82B Queen Bee target drone, which first flew successfully in 1935, is credited with popularising the term ‘drone’ for unmanned aircraft. Meanwhile, British actor Reginald Denny’s Radioplane Company (co-founded with Walter Righter and others) developed the OQ-2/OQ-3 series; these became the first mass-produced UAVs in the US, with nearly 15,000 units manufactured during World War II.
One of the most significant drone-related developments during WWII was the German V-1 “buzz bomb” or “doodlebug,” powered by a pulsejet engine and universally recognised as the world’s first operational cruise missile. This technology was later reverse-engineered by the US.
Leaping forward a few more years, the next big step in drone technology occurred during the Vietnam War, which saw the first use of drones with cameras for reconnaissance. Drones also began to be used in a range of new roles, such as acting as decoys in combat, launching missiles against fixed targets, and dropping leaflets for psychological operations.
During the 1960s and 70s, recreational RC (radio-controlled) planes became prominent due to breakthroughs in transistor technology at the time. Radio-controlled components could now be miniaturised enough to be sold to civilian customers at a reasonable cost, setting up a commercial side to the RC technology.
Between 1980 and 1989, military drone technology advanced significantly, but they were often considered unreliable and expensive. However, the global perceptions about their cost-effectiveness and reliability changed with Israel’s highly successful use of IAI Scout and Mastiff UAVs for real-time intelligence and decoy operations during the 1982 Lebanon War. This led to the US and Israel co-developing the medium-sized reconnaissance aircraft RQ-2 Pioneer, which first flew in 1985 and entered service in 1986.
The next frontier in technology came in the mid-1900s, with the General Atomics RQ-1/MQ-1 Predator entering USAF service in 1995–1996. This drone conducted armed missions in the early 2000s and played a key role in Afghanistan and the hunt for Osama bin Laden. During this time, mini- and micro-UAVs also became practical and widespread, with AeroVironment’s RQ-11 Raven (introduced 2003) becoming the most widely fielded small UAV in US military history.
Since 2010, drone technology has experienced rapid advancement, with many analysts dubbing this period the ‘Golden Age’ of drones—propelled by technological innovation, miniaturisation, and the integration of systems like GPS. Previously limited to military and hobbyist use, drones found new applications in the early 2010s, including proposals to use them as delivery vehicles. However, their expanded role also raised concerns. A 2020 study by Brown University's Costs of War Project estimated that US drone strikes from 2010 to 2020 killed between 910 and 2,200 civilians in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia.
Increasing influence of modern UAVs in warfare
Although pilotless, radio-controlled UAVs have been part of military arsenals since World War I, their low cost and ease of deployment have dramatically expanded their role on the battlefield today—reshaping modern warfare, where drones costing mere hundreds of dollars can take out artillery or tanks worth millions.
Talking to ETV Bharat, Professor Shreyas Nambiar, Chief Business Officer at Universal AI University, calls it a double-edged sword. "Since relatively cheap drones can now fill the void of conventional war-fighting financial investments, it increases the core ethical, legal, and strategic questions relating to autonomy, accountability, and international stability,” he said.
At the Bengaluru Tech Summit, Yeshwanth Reddy, co-founder and CEO of a drone startup, Unmanned, shared a similar sentiment. "Over the last three years, we've witnessed a major transformation in modern conflicts; they have become increasingly drone-centric,” he said. “Drone pilots operating from remote shelters are now the norm.”
According to market research and analysis firm Market.US, the global drone market size stood at $36.4 billion in 2024, out of which the military segment accounted for the largest portion at 48.8 per cent. With the global market projected to be worth $95.4 billion by 2034, growing at a CAGR of 10.1 per cent, the military market is expected to follow suit, with analysts forecasting a CAGR of 7-12 per cent.
In addition to being cost-effective, the use of drones for military operations comes with a range of advantages, which include:
- Reduced human risk, making them ideal for high-risk missions in hostile environments without putting the life of the pilot in danger
- The ability to gather real-time intelligence as they can stay over a battlefield for long periods, providing continuous surveillance
- Lower logistical requirements as they don’t need extensive infrastructure or support for operation
- Operational flexibility, allowing not only reconnaissance but also performing precision strikes, long-range attacks, and coordinated swarm attacks
Modern drones are defining conflicts around the world
In recent years, the widespread, mass use of drones in conflicts around the world rekindled the debate on conventional weapon systems vs autonomous weapon systems. Drones were an important part of conflicts like Armenia vs Azerbaijan in 2020, Russia vs Ukraine in 2022, Israel vs Iran in 2024, and the recent conflict between India and Pakistan in 2025.
Armenia and Azerbaijan Conflict: Back in 2020, the Nagorno-Karabakh War and Azerbaijan’s extensive use of drones to systematically destroy Armenian armour, artillery, and air defence systems ignited the global debate on conventional weapon systems versus modern unmanned and autonomous combat systems. With significant support from Turkey and Israel, Azerbaijan deployed a large and diverse fleet of drones—primarily Turkish Bayraktar TB2s and Israeli loitering munitions such as the IAI Harop—to overwhelm Armenian air defences, suppress artillery, and destroy dozens of tanks and other armoured vehicles.
Russia and Ukraine Conflict: The war in Ukraine has seen drone deployment on an unprecedented scale, with both sides operating tens of thousands of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for reconnaissance, artillery spotting, and direct strikes. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, drones have become one of the defining features of the conflict, enabling Ukraine to partially offset Russia’s initial advantages in artillery, manpower, and airpower. By early 2025, drones were responsible for approximately 70–80 per cent of battlefield casualties and equipment losses on both sides.
From 2022 to early 2023, Ukraine relied heavily on commercial quadcopters (notably the DJI Mavic series) for reconnaissance and artillery correction due to severe shell shortages. From mid-2023 onward, Ukraine rapidly scaled domestic production of low-cost first-person-view (FPV) kamikaze drones, building dense, layered defences—often described as a “drone wall”—consisting of overlapping surveillance and strike UAV corridors typically 10–20 km deep along the active front.
From 2024 to 2025, drone warfare escalated, with Ukraine producing over 1 million FPVs annually. At the same time, Russia launched 100,000+ Shaheds while scaling its own FPV production. As the conflict embraced jamming and electronic warfare, fibre-optic drones, long-range UAV strikes, recon layers, and AI-guided autonomy, it resulted in a high-tech stalemate where drones largely replaced traditional artillery and armour, making large-scale offensives prohibitively costly.
Israel and Iran Conflict: On April 1, 2024, a suspected Israeli airstrike targeted an Iranian consular building in Damascus, Syria, killing two Iranian generals and five military advisors. In response, Iran launched over 300 drones and missiles—its first direct attack on Israeli territory. This marked the onset of open hostilities between the two nations, culminating in a 13-day war in June 2025 that involved the exchange of hundreds of missiles and thousands of drones by both sides.
India-Pakistan Conflict and Operation Sindoor: In May 2025, the India-Pakistan crisis marked the first formal drone exchange between the two neighbours, starting on the night of May 7 with India’s launch of Operation Sindoor, followed by Pakistan’s response in the form of Operation Bunyan-um-Marsoos. Strikes continued over the ensuing 72 hours until the announcement of a ceasefire.
During the conflict, the extensive use of drones, particularly by New Delhi, stood out. India deployed cost-effective aerial platforms–including Harop, Harpy, Nagastra-1, Warmate R, Warmate 3, and ASL drones–into Pakistan’s airspace in three distinct waves from May 7 to May 10. In turn, Pakistan’s armed forces also launched drones at India early on May 10.
These modern conflicts serve as undeniable proof that drones are no longer niche tools—they are reshaping the nature of warfare in unprecedented ways. The hovering sound of drones has become ominous, a harbinger of precision strikes, surveillance, and psychological pressure. Once the domain of specialised forces, drones now saturate the battlefield—initiating a game of cat and mouse between UAVs and anti-drone systems.
